David,
I too have wrestled with the crazy-maker "one size must fit all" BCM design
reality. When creating so called "integration" with Office Accounting it
apparently never ocurred to any of the BCM tech gurus that there are numerous
real-world users such as you and I who do business with "customers" that are
individual people vs. only organizations!
Here is how I keep it all straight in my mind now for work around purposes:
The BCM Account Record can serve 2 distinct data tracking functions. 1)
Contact Management grouping-Marketing & Vendors Management. 2) Financial
Transaction grouping-Sales Management.
I'll give you an example from my own consulting business model that hopefully
will clarify. I sell my services directly to individuals (Business to Person)
and I target my Marketing Lead generation campaign efforts toward
organizations that are in a position to refer individual prospective clients
to me. I use the Account Record to relate to these referral organization
sources and I assign a category called "Referral" to each of these Accounts.
I do not directly sell to or do any financial transactions with these
referral accounts. I do focus heavily upon developing positive
"RELATIONSHIPS" with the individual Business Contacts linked to these
referral Account organizations because they are the life blood source of my
service business. These "Marketing-Referral" type Account Records serve to
more easily manage and massage the flow of prospective individual people that
they refer my way to eventually sell to.
Once I receive a referred individual sales prospect I create a Business
Contact record (quick capture) and I designate it as a LEAD until such time
that I complete an initial qualification of this Lead. Once this
introductory qualification occurs the Lead either is disqualified or it
evolves into the first stage of my business sales cycle as a newly created
Opportunity record and I then link this Lead Business Contact record to this
Opportunity record. I also include the individual's name in the Opportunity
name field for handy reference. If the Opportunity does not close into a
sales transaction it ends there with the final sales stage indicating this
status. If the Opportunity evolves and closes into a sale I then create an
Account Record for that individual and I link the Opportunity record to this
new Account Record so that all Opportunity Communication History "rolls up"
into the new Account record. To these types of Account Records I assign a
category called "Client" which is different from my separate Account Record
"Referral" category mentioned above. These "Client" type of Account records
are what I will then financially relate to the "Customer" records in Office
Accounting.
Instead of using categories in the above examples you could also just create
custom fields if you prefer so that these designations are more easily sorted
and shared by others in your office if your BCM db is networked. You can
also of course be more fancy and designate various modified types of
"Referral" and "Client" Accounts if needed.
By distinguishing between the Sales Function of an Account Record vs. the
Marketing Function of an Account Record I have found a better way to adapt
BCM to what I am doing. It is said that CRM is all about building
"RELATIONSHIPS" and although this is certainly true in the actual Sales Cycle
process with each Lead Prospect, it is even more vital within the upfront
Marketing function activities of one's business or else you never generate
any one to ever sell to in the first place.
I hope this brief description of my own workflow adaptation of BCM is helpful.
I would love to see MS publish a book with such specific varied examples to
model for individuals in different industries how to effectively tailor BCM
to work best for their particular needs. It can be rather confusing and non-
intuitive to sort through this on your own when you are a new user to this
application.
I also must give due credit and thanks to Lon Orenstein, President of
Pinpoint Tools, LLC for his helpful and clarifying input around these
marketing and sales relationship ideas. Lon regularly contributes to this
newsgroup and is a co-author of the recently released Outlook 2007 BCM for
Dummies.
www.pinpointtools.com
Best wishes,
-THP
I'm a solo lawyer, trying to use BCM to keep track of clients. BCM seems to
default to "accounts" as organizations; however, many of the clients that I
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Any advice from the collective?
TIA---David Rowll
